Closed Bug 365975 (ssdbot) Opened 18 years ago Closed 17 years ago

MozBot project is dead, switch ssdbot to something else

Categories

(Bugzilla :: bugzilla.org, enhancement)

x86
Linux
enhancement
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: mkanat, Assigned: mkanat)

Details

The MozBot project is pretty much dead--it hasn't seen much activity in a few years now. I totally understand why this is--Hixie is busy with more important things, and that's fine. The only major developments have been in the Bugzilla module.

So, I'm thinking that we should switch to another type of IRC bot that is maintained and has lots of cool plugins available.

As far as I know, the only plugins we'd have to port to any new bot would be the Bugzilla plugin and the Tinderbox plugin.

It looks like most of the newer bots are written in python, although if we could find a good perl bot that would make porting the two modules easier.

Whatever we choose, it has to be actively maintained and have a decently-large user base so that we know it's well-tested and active.

I'm considering supybot: http://supybot.com/

Any other suggestions are welcome.
I'd be happy to pass over module ownership to someone else. I've been intending to work on Mozbot for years, but as noted above, I have failed to do so. I apologise profusely for this. I think Mozbot has a pretty cool architecture, and could be quite easily extended for, e.g., i18n support. I'd be happy to advise whoever wants to take over ownership.
Yeah, the trick is just that it needs a very active owner. I don't really have the time, myself. Wolf may. Colin and Wicked don't seem to have the time, as far as I know.

What I'd really like to see is a bot that has a dedicated maintainer who that's their primary focus. In the same way that LpSolit and I focus primarily on Bugzilla.

MozBot also doesn't have a very large community, being primarily used on irc.mozilla.org only, with a few users using it elsewhere because of the Bugzilla module.

The reason that I wanted to pick another type of bot entirely is that I'd really like one with a broader community *and* one (or more) active maintainer(s).

It's not any particular bias against MozBot, just that there are some bots out there with some cool features that I don't necessarily want to hack into MozBot. These bots have these cool features because they've been being developed actively for the last two or three years, where MozBot hasn't been.
What kind of cool features would you like to see? We don't need such an active maintainer if Mozbot is working fine as is. We can fix/implement features when we need it.
Here's a list of the official plugins for supybot:

http://supybot.com/documentation/plugins/

That's a fairly good example of some of the nice features.


Also, apparently there's already a basic Bugzilla module for it:

http://supybot.sourceforge.net/docs/plugins/Bugzilla.html

That plugin even already supports multiple bugzillas.
(In reply to comment #4)
> Here's a list of the official plugins for supybot:

This doesn't tell me which features you are interested in.
Okay. Well, I don't know how many of these supybot has or could be hacked in, but the features that I'd like are:

* Easy plugin development
* Maintained
* Accepts and queues inbound emails without me having to write code for it
* "perldoc" functionality like the bot in #perl on FreeNode
* Infobot support good enough to merge word and ssdbot, possibly
* More per-channel configuration
* The ability to give somebody permissions more granular than "admin"
* The ability to log and do channel stats, possibly.
* Have searchable logs like logbot.
* Authing with NickServ in the correct order (before joining channels) so that
  it can be auto-opped.
* Possibly a web interface to the bot, and to the logs.

Also, just having the ability to select from a larger plugin base could be useful. Sometimes you get something, and you don't know exactly how you're going to use all of its new features until they are there and available.

Also, I want to do all of the above with minimal hacking. To me, re-writing the Bugzilla module is pretty minimal hacking, since I already wrote it once and I have all of the code and logic in Bugzilla.bm already. However, hacking at the internals of MozBot or a new module is more hacking than I want to do at this point.

Also, I've seen some bots that are faster than ssdbot (as in, they respond basically instantaneously) and I'd like that.
(In reply to comment #2)
> Yeah, the trick is just that it needs a very active owner. I don't really have
> the time, myself. Wolf may. Colin and Wicked don't seem to have the time, as
> far as I know.

I do have the time, I'm just not sure if I'm up to the challenge of owning something. Hmm, looks like neither me or colin did new release. Maybe that's good first step. :)

I have some patches to mozbot waiting finishing touches. New Nagios module (bug 331366), core fix (bug 293985), and few new features to Bugzilla module (bug 332068, bug 332069, bug 332066, bug 301080). After those I'm going to need multi-bugzilla support (bug 331370) for my bot. Bugzilla ones I can push in depending on mkanat but others are pretty much stuck behind hixie.

(In reply to comment #6)
> Also, I've seen some bots that are faster than ssdbot (as in, they respond
> basically instantaneously) and I'd like that.

I find my bot pretty fast. Answers in 1 sec for simple hello. Of course, it depends on what you ask about. Bugzilla queries are slow because they need to query the remote Bugzilla.. Also perl doesn't like if server resources are taxed too much. Doubtfull if python works any better in that case.
Hrm, why is this bug in the 'Bugzilla' product instead of being in 'MozBot'?
Technically, this bug is about ssdbot only. and since it resides on landfill and is part of the bugzilla project.... (since the outcome of this won't directly affect firebot or other mozbot's that exist.) I personally, have the time, but not the perl knowledge.
Assignee: mkanat → website
Err. sorry about that. I'm pretty sure I didn't hit anything to do that, but, doh.
Assignee: website → mkanat
I don't see why this bug is still open as you brought buggybot on irc.mozilla.org. If someone is happy to play with ssdbot, then you should let him do.
I still have to make a Tinderbox1 module for supybot, and then ssdbot can go.
Okay, bugbot can now do everything that ssdbot could do, so this is now done!
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 17 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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